Aliza In The Field

Our first site visit in France was at Rêves (means "dreams"), the French version of Make A Wish Foundation, at their offices just outside Lyon. We met with two staff members, Aurélie and Virginie, who showed us photos from many of the dreams that have been realized. Like in the US, the most common request is Disney (though of course here it's Euro Disney in France). Some of the other interesting requests are to meet celebrities (Eva Longoria, Robert Pattinson), or are related to animals, like feeding a baby tiger or swimming with seals or dolphins. Rêves grants wishes to children and teens up to the age of 18, but they work with other groups and are able to refer the cases they can't take.

Their project on our site is to help a teenage girl with a terminal illness meet a famous horse trainer, and it has already been fully funded. We are always glad to see a successful project, and we can't wait to see what they're going to post next!

Read more about this GlobalGiving project here (but no more donating, since it has been fully funded!): http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/meet-frederick-pignon-equine-handler/

As opposed to many of the other organizations on the site, our sole Barcelona project is led by a single entrepreneur, Aseel Honein, who came to GlobalGiving through a World Bank initiative. Her project is to empower homeless people by looking to develop long-term solutions to the problems that cause homelessness. In other words, instead of providing temporary shelter for homeless people, Aseel's project would like to address the causes of the homelessness.

Aseel organizes and hosts brainstorming workshops, and also plans awareness campaigns. During our meeting, Aseel (above), whose full-time job is as a professor of architecture and design in Lebanon, showed us some of her results. In one video, some of her Lebanese students came to spend a week in Barcelona, where they put together a demonstration with a light up swing in a park where children play during the day but homeless people sleep at night. We also saw some ideas from the workshops, including one in which beach umbrellas could have pull-down shades to turn into shacks, and another where these small shops that sell food or magazines along Las Ramblas could have small beds built into the back. As neither Shonali nor myself are art and design people, it was interesting to see these solutions pitched from an architecture and spacial perspective instead of a political one. We look forward to more innovative ideas from this project!

Read more about and donate to this GlobalGiving project here: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/barcelona-social-inclusion-empower-2500-homeless/

Behind on the blogging, so I am condensing posts! We held two workshops in Spain, one each in Madrid and Barcelona. Both were smaller than the ones we've been holding in Morocco, mostly because Europe in August is a virtual ghost town. As we have been told time and again these past two weeks, todo el mundo está en vacaciones. However, the organizations that did show up were happy to speak with us about their Twitter accounts, fundraising strategies, and expanding their networks on- and off-line.

It has also been interesting for us to witness the transition to Europe. In Morocco, the organizations identified with the other African projects on the site and did not doubt that they could be successful. But in Europe, we have gotten many queries as to why Americans would bother donating to projects in Western Europe when they could donate instead to AIDS orphans in Africa or educating girls in India. The answer to that is, of course, that a good project is a good project, no matter where it is; hungry and needy people in the developed world are not less deserving than hungry people in Africa. There are so many organizations in Spain with fantastic projects, and many of them would undoubtedly benefit from GlobalGiving. Hopefully the next team to visit Europe will get to meet even more of them as partners instead of prospects.

It's been a while since I updated, but Europe has been a very different experience than Morocco, and we have been keeping very busy indeed! Last week in Madrid, Shonali started out by visiting a project of Fundación Juan XXIII, our partner through the GG satellite office in London, GlobalGiving UK.

Fundación Juan provides job and IT training to mentally disabled adults in Madrid. Spain does not have the vast social worker system that the US does, so these individuals are often left to be cared for by their families with very little instruction or assistance after they finish the school system at 18. At the FJ center in Madrid, they get job training, grooming and hygiene classes (so they can prepare to live alone), access to gym and arts facilities, and training in a variety of computer and IT skills so they can enter the job market. They also get job training to work in the hospitality industry (restaurants, hotels, etc.), and there is even a cafe on the premises for them to practice - which we visited with Laura, the lovely project leader.

Read more about and donate to this GlobalGiving project here: http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/projects/it-space-for-learning-disabled-people-in-madrid/

Hola from Madrid!

Shonali and I had a fairly epic roadtrip journey from Chefchaouen to Madrid, so much so that we are actually both still a little amazed that it all worked out. The ferries leave from Tanger to Spain, so we knew we had to get to Tanger. At first we had been planning on a day in Asilah, but Chefchaouen was so beautiful and perfect that we stayed there an extra day instead.

Basically, there are two kinds of taxis in Morocco. Petit taxis only hold three passengers, usually have working meters (!!) and go anywhere in that given city. Grand taxis hold six passengers (they are regular sedans but just squeeze people in: two in the front, four in the back, no seatbelts, no personal space, no mercy) and go between towns and villages. So Shonali and I first took one grand taxi from Chefchaouen to Tetouan (one hour, 30 dirham aka about 3 dollars), for which we were seated in the back. We arrived in Tetouan and hopped in another grand taxi to Tanger (one hour, 25 dirham), for which we were squished in the front two seats. At first this seemed a bit uncomfortable, but when one of the women in back started vomiting, it suddenly became the best plan ever. We got out in Tanger and took a local petit taxi to the port.

The ferry was the "EUROPE" moment for us both: suddenly, all the prices were in euros, people were uncovered and drinking beer (in the middle of the day, during Ramadan), and the whole thing was air conditioned and efficient (we left EARLY...who does that??). Our ferry let us out in Tarifa, where we hopped a free shuttle bus to Algeciras, and then got tickets for the 8.5-hour bus ride to Madrid. Although we were clearly back in Europe, this particular bus was clearly a Moroccan affair. Most of the people around us were speaking Arabic again, and when the fast ended an imam came down the aisle to pass out dates.

Chefchaouen is maybe the most beautiful place in Morocco, if not one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, ever. The town is mostly medina (old city), everything painted blue and white and set against the Rif Mountains. It is cleaner and nicer than (though admittedly less expansive as) the Fes medina, and also marks the place where people started speaking to us in Spanish. This was my favorite back when I visited as a study abroad student in college, and after a MUCH longer stay this time...it might still be.

For the last week or so, Ramadan speculation has run rampant. Islam goes by the lunar calendar (similar to Judaism), so the start of the holy month is different every year (usually beginning about two weeks earlier than the year before). It was supposed to start on or about July 21, depending on the moon, and that is basically what happened. Walking around in Fez on Friday, we could see all the locals stocking up on sweets for iftar (breakfast meal, at sundown) and sohour (last meal served very early in the morning just before sunrise, when the fast resumes). 

I remembered from Egypt that the pace of life is drastically altered during Ramadan: people tend to sleep in the afternoon, eat iftar at sunset, then stay up all night seeing friends and relatives, shopping (and, or course, eating). So the mornings are pretty inactive, which is inconvenient when you need to catch a taxi to the bus station at 8 am. However, it did mean that the bus was practically empty, because no one really wants to travel at that time of day.

Some scenes from the Fez medina (Old City): camel meat for sale; the inside courtyard of a madrasa (Quranic school), which is currently closed for repairs and maintenance; the leather tanneries (they give you mint sprigs to hold under your nose, to help with the smell); a local carpet maker demonstrating the hand-weaving process on his loom; and traditional-style shoes for sale.

Our final Morocco workshop was last week, in Rabat. The 12 attendees were all women, and as a group had the greatest familiarity with social media of any workshop yet. As at the workshops in Casa and Marrakech, there was a lot of enthusiasm and so many great ideas for projects and fundraising. We received some encouraging feedback, and some organizations have already emailed us to ask how to nominate themselves for the next GlobalGiving Global Open Challenge. It was a really satisfying way to end our workshop experience in Morocco!

On Friday we visited a really cool project in Kenitra, about 30 minutes north of Rabat. The organization, BAYTI ("my home" in Arabic) is already a partner of GlobalGiving through our corporate partnership with Dell. But we'd love to have their projects listed on our main site, so Shonali and I were thrilled to have the opportunity to meet with representatives from the organization, and to tour the project they plan to list on GG for the next Open Challenge in September: a farm school.

The school, home to 35 teenagers from poor neighborhoods or broken families, provides stability, skills training, and the means to an education for children who might otherwise have turned to drugs or the streets. The students take classes in reading/writing Arabic and maths, and work on the farm year-round. When they graduate, they will have also learned a trade -- farming -- that they can use to set up businesses. There are plans to expand the program to include more extracurricular options and social activities, which we think is great. 

During our visit, the project leader showed us the vegetable gardens, the cows and chickens being raised, and the new fruit orchards being planted. The farm school has been operational for 7 years, but the staff is always looking for ways to make improvements. We think these are great goals for them to consider as they join the Open Challenge!

Shonali and I arrived in Rabat just in time to do some exploring over the weekend. We still have a few cities to visit, but it's possible that Rabat might be my favorite so far.

We have been told that there is a sort of rivalry between Rabat and Casa, which are only about an hour apart on the coast. Casa is the bigger city, and is the center for commerce and business. Rabat is the capital, and thus the place for diplomats and government. Casa got a big fancy Western mall that Rabat is in the process of imitating; Rabat was first to get a light-rail, which Casa is now building, etc. After just a few days, I already love Rabat more.